11,000 years living in the human stomach

2002/11/05 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Eboluzioa
• Mikrobiologia

Helicobacter pylori bacteria are responsible for many ulcers and cancers of the stomach. Despite being discovered a few years ago, thanks to recent research, scientists have discovered that the bacteria have been in our stomach for at least 11,000 years.

The research has been carried out in Venezuela by a group of scientists from the University of New York, with people belonging to two ethnic groups, some with European ancestors and others belonging to an isolated Amazonian population.

Both groups took stomach samples and analyzed the presence of H. pylori bacteria. The bacteria were present in the samples of both groups, but it was observed that each population had a different strain of the bacteria: the European ancestors had the same strain as the European population and the Amazonian population had the East Asian strain.

This data has two direct consequences: on the one hand, the bacterium H. pylori has resided in the human stomach earlier than expected; on the other, it states that the American origin is in Asia, since the eastern strain of the bacteria is the one that Americans have in the stomach.